Delta, smelt are victims of failed state water policy

You might wish you had as much power to affect the environment and the economy as the delta smelt.

Enemies have blamed the tiny freshwater fish for putting farmers out of business across California's breadbasket, forcing the fallowing of vast acres of arable land, creating double-digit unemployment in agricultural counties, even clouding the judgment of scientists and judges.

During the presidential campaign, the lowly smelt turned up in Donald Trump's gunsights, when he repeated California farmers' claim that the government was taking their water supply and "shoving it out to sea ... to protect a certain kind of three-inch fish."

But the delta smelt couldn't be as powerful as all that. The latest California fish population survey in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta,